"No," he said finally. "I wasn't happy. But I was still me. Every bad day still belonged to me. You're offering a version of tonight where none of it would have hurt because none of it would have mattered — and that's not relief, that's just a different kind of disappearing."Something flickered across Vessel Nine's smooth expression — the first crack Bara had seen in it, gone almost as fast as it appeared."Sentimental," the Sovereign's voice rolled down from above, cold and amused. "Predictable. Vessel Nine, proceed."Vessel Nine moved.He came in low and fast, faster than Bara's borrowed strength could track cleanly, and the first blow caught Bara across the ribs hard enough to lift him off his feet and slam him into the brick wall behind him. Pain exploded white behind his eyes. Somewhere far away he heard his mother scream his name, heard his father shout something with real panic in it for the first time all night, and Titan's gold light flared furious around his wrist as if try

"That's not a Sentinel. That's a Comb-Killer." The old woman's voice had gone thin with something Bara hadn't heard from her all night — not caution, not calculation, but actual fear, and that alone was enough to make his stomach drop before he'd even turned to look at what was tearing through the narrowing seam above them. It came through wrong, unlike the Sovereign's fluid gold light or the Sentinels' ordered descent — it came through violently, black smoke shot through with red where gold should have been, a shape that kept almost resolving into something recognizable and then refusing to hold still long enough to be understood. The rain hissed to steam wherever the smoke touched it. "Arbiter," the Sovereign said, its earlier arrogance completely gone now, "I didn't summon that. I swear on the Comb I didn't—" "I know," the Arbiter said, and for the first time all night its calm, measured voice cracked